it is heavenly to work finally at a boring university

I guess it makes me super old that I think students a) write better first drafts by hand and b) it’s easier and quicker to mark hand-written or printed work rather than scrolling through a screen

Oh no not research and knowledge.

even in the city you’re always in the steppe where the skies are frequently spectacular

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. #ShakespeareSunday

dressing-up to go to the bazaar

haven’t listened to this one in a while but it cuts straight through me every time youtu.be/Io2Cl1u5gmU?...

“Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: “But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory” 1 Cor 2:6-7

Robertson Davies makes me laugh in public like a madman

this would be a great opportunity for many people I know in a year when many people have lost their jobs and yet their skills and experiences have never been more needed!

someone gave me a whole list of recommendations for contemporary Kazakh music so you know where to find me

Almaty opens its first contemporary art museum with Almagul Menlibayeva’s powerful solo show, marking a new era for Kazakh and Central Asian art timesca.com/kazakhstans-... #Kazakhstan #Almaty #ContemporaryArt #CentralAsia #AlmagulMenlibayeva #KazakhArt #ArtMuseumOpening

you mean like manuscripts? get on our level

philologists: I’m reading a manuscript text that only exists in a 17th-century sammelband discovered in the 1960s but only catologued last year after being misidentified by a senile Cistercian monk philosophers: I’m reading a Penguin Classic

The Beauty and Value of Eastern Bilingual Manuscripts of the Bible by a (brilliant!) KU Leuven colleague Maxime Maleux alongthesilkroad.com/2025/09/12/t...

three of my sporting heroes in the 1980s were Ayrton Senna, Diego Maradona, and Viv Richards

wore my woolly hat for the first time today call me princess but I sense that I won’t be taking it off until mid-March 2026 at the earliest

nine months I’ve been coming here and this bartender has not softened one iota

I reviewed an article earlier this summer that summarised an argument that *I* definitely did not not make in a paper that yes I wrote but was one of those bundled citations that are really sus especially when they neglect to cite page number s

I try to persuade my students like this: we live in a world where many people struggle to have what basic humanity requires and indeed have it forcefully taken away from them and you would choose to give it up voluntarily?

wait whut this is a campus novel

tl;dr I bought lamb but it smelled funky at every stage of preparation and cooking so I ended up binning an entire dish of lamb stewed with green beans and plums and nothing pains me more than tossing food

back on my bs

sitting in a bar in Astana on a Friday night and someone on guitar is bashing out *checks notes* About a Girl by Nirvana the kids are truly alright

they don’t want academics doing stuff that doesn’t bring in huge grants so the admin can’t peel off IOCs

a student saw what I was wearing and asked if “today was Barbie Day”

I have now learned from experience that a small qazan of homemade plov lasts five days

NPR at least went with “others said he was a voice for intolerance” and played clips of him saying vile racist shit

that backfired

Elizabeth Tsurkov, for me, is an example of a rare Jewish Israeli who decided to embrace the Middle East as her home, immersed itself in Arabic language and culture, struggled and put herself at risk for justice and liberty for people in Palestine, Syria and Iraq. She's a model of how things can be.

wait whut?

there seems to be a massive amount of art cultural-industrial complex stuff happening in Central Asia at the moment such that both Bukhara Biennale and Almaty Museum of Arts have opened *in the same week*

when I did my PhD at IU Bloomington one thing that blew my mind was just how staggeringly big the student population was compared with the British unis I was familiar with

when I get another cat I will name it Owen Cattimore

this would be quite something

The regime’s megalomania continues unabated. New flag, new city names, massive destruction of national heritage, and glitzy infrastructure projects.

Ooh good one!

it was over 20 years ago that Vanity Fair revealed Bill Clinton’s creepy proclivities for much younger women courtesy of Jeffrey Epstein but yes let’s all indulge Democrats now clutching their pearls and pretend this is all a huge and new revelation

miaow

I am in Bukhara but I am not in Bukhara

Bukhara launches its first Biennale blending contemporary art heritage and healing with global works from palm waste prayer spaces to golden thread restorations timesca.com/recipes-for-... #Uzbekistan #Bukhara #Biennale #Art #Culture #CentralAsia #Heritage #Creativity

Remember, students, smash the four olds! Old thinking, old culture, old customs, and old habits! Report counterrevolutionary instructors who defy Our President's Laws to the proper authorities for reeducation!

pace Thucydides there are three causes of culture wars fear, honour, and profit culture war hucksters know no fear and are utterly dishonourable and therefore are probably doing it for the 💵

later on in the 🧵 someone points out that Columbia’s freshman seminar is actually quite trad as Great Books surveys go but yes let’s all pay attention to the Quran 🤦

I’m now seeing reports and photos and video of the destruction of the glass mosaic at the front of the Aitmatov Russian Theater in Bishkek

have decided to make plov for dinner because that’s how overwhelming my feelings *waves at everything* are right now

I keep thinking about how Gerald Hawting was my first-year tutor at SOAS all those years ago and how I never took advantage to meet with him regularly to sit and learn all I did was ask him to approve my course-selections at the beginning and end of every academic year

lines on the face are lines of poetry